pain

Finding Strength in Waiting

~ abidingtrust ~ Leave a comment

I started doing Crossfit several months ago and there are many things that I love about it however, there are a few exercises that I just can’t wrap my mind around. One of them is a rope climb. There is a very specific way that this is accomplished (and I do realize that I am going get something wrong here, I am sure, pease don’t come for me. HA!!!)

Before jumping onto the rope I was trying to remind myself of what goes where.
First – Jump high enough that I am off the ground, making sure I have a firm grip on both sides of the rope
Second – Within seconds of the jump and grab I need to make sure the rope goes on the outside and underneath my right foot
Third- Use my left foot to finish the “J” so I have a footing to “stand on”

All this has to be done within about 1 second of each other but I have tried this enough times I know that I can accomplish it. The problem was, the goal today was see how long I could hold on for. It wasn’t until I was about 10 seconds in that I realized I have been here before. The waiting, the waiting until the timer goes off and I can let go. The issue was, either it never went off or I didn’t hear it.

Sometimes when we are in a season of waiting the wave of emotions come so fast and furious that we couldn’t take inventory if we tried. Sometimes we are left with one singular emotion for so long that we have started to carry it around like a child, but also afraid to let it mature and leave the proverbial nest. In this case, it’s a matter of holding onto something to tightly that the pain is outweighing the benefit of the exercise to begin with. That’s when something dawned on me. There are times as believers we wrap our minds up so tightly around a situation or season of life that we don’t see what God is doing. I imagine it goes something like this:

“Lord, my arms are starting to tire.” I say, at a whisper
“ok, better situate your feet so there’s not so much pressure on your arms.” God says back to me.
More time went by and my next plea came from my lips “Lord, I am starting to slip, I have tried to place my feet more firmly but I am slipping”
“Hold on a little tighter” He said.
“Lord, I am holding on tighter now but my hands hurt”
“I have given you strong legs to hold yourself up, remember to use those too.”
After readjusting a little I found I could put a little more pressure on my legs but they started to shake
“Lord, my legs are shaking, my arms are tired, my hands are burning, Im starting to slip.”
“I’ve got you, hold on tighter.”
“Lord, my hands are starting to bleed, I don’t think I can hold on tighter.”
“I will be the salve for your hands, keep holding on”
“Lord, my hands are bleeding, my arms are weary, my legs are tired, the rope is slipping.”
“Hold on, hold on a little longer, I see your tears, I feel your pain, I hear your cries for help, keep holding.“
“LORD!” I yell, “the rope is fraying and digging into my bloodied hands!”
“Lord, my legs are burning from the rope being wrapped around them!
“Lord, I feel like you aren’t hearing me!”
“God, I am doing everything that you have told me and it still hurts”
“Lord, why can’t I hear you any more.”
“Lord, I can’t hold on, it hurts so much”
“Lord, I have to let go, the pain is unbearable.”
and just then, I hear a whisper “My child, let your left leg down just an inch”
And just then I realize that there is a step for me to stand on.
“Lord, how long as this bench been here?”
“I just placed it there but it took a while for me to cut down the tree, put it together and place it in just the right spot that you wouldn’t have to endure any more pain to reach it.”

*Sigh*

Have you ever felt like you were in a season like that? It reminds me of Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9 “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. 9 We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.”

Paul doesn’t mess around! He never says that we will be free from pain, discouragement, troubles and the like but rather he says that in the midst of these things we will not be abandoned nor destroyed. It’s so hard in the moment to see the things that God is doing. In the season of waiting we are so often over consumed with the what if, the “but when” and so on but our job as believers is to remember that there is someone out there fighting FOR us.

It’s also possible that the season of waiting is about refinement. Ugh, I almost think that’s worse. It’s the allowing of God to apply heat over and over again, to bring the impurities to the top so He can remove them. But what if instead of seeing all the pain and heartache, we were able to look past those things to what He has planned for us. What if all the things that He is doing in and through us, all the refinement that is happening is all to prepare us for Heaven. What if the troubles of the right now are ways that He is working through all the muck and mire so that we can be better prepared to show someone else the path to a better life? What if the refinement, even seven times over, is done so that we are the best version of ourselves that He needs us to be for someone else. Isn’t it all worth it then? Isn’t it much more fulfilling to endure the pressure, the pain, discouragement and so on if that means that someone else will see the love of Christ in and through us? Isn’t that what He did for us?

So Lord, let it be. Let my trials, fear, pain, and the waiting season be for Your good, for Your glory and to bring others to know You. Instead of feeling beaten down by trails help me to remember that my faith is being refined.

And I don’t know where you are right now, and in no way am I meaning to make light of such things but what I do know is that He is always there. He is hears our cries and our silent tears. He knows the desires of our heart and even though we don’t always see it this way, He wants what is best for us. It is simply our job to hear Him when He says “Be still and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10a

Finding Strength in Chaos: Embracing Patience

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One summer, when I was 9 years old, my mom tasked me with painting the intricate parts of a metal table. So intricate that it wasn’t done with a normal size paintbrush or even a 1/2 size one. The painting was done with a tiny paintbrush about the size of the ones that come in the Crayola watercolor sets. Other kids at 9 years old would have viewed this as a punishment but I didn’t have to think twice. I was thrilled!!! About half way through the project my mother came out to the garage where I was working, smiled and just said “you are the perfect person for this, you have the patience of Job.” Of who? I thought to myself. We grew up going to church and I guess I loosely understood the story of Job but the phrase was far more popular in my mind than the Bible story. I kinda chuckled and kept on my merry painting way.

James mentions Job’s patience in verse 11

“We give great honor to those who endure under suffering. For instance, you know about Job, a man of great endurance. You can see how the Lord was kind to him at the end, for the Lord is full of tenderness and marcy.” James 5:11

Patience is one of those things that I never asked for, I didn’t think that I needed more than I had and I did learn early on in my walk with the Lord to not ask for it. Granted, that might just be a funny joke in the Christian world but typically when we, as believers, ask God for patience it sure seems like he provides an abundance of opportunity to test out this new found blessing.

So why do we find ourselves in these moments of wanting and waiting? Well, that seems to be answered by many things but mainly this season of waiting can be described as being in the middle of here and wanting to get there. It’s like, I know God has impressed things on my my heart that I truly believe are from Him and His plans but then we sit here wondering what is taking so long. The truth is, God is far more interested in who you are becoming than what you are doing. 

“Wait patiently for the Lord, Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.” Psalms 27:14

I don’t know about you but some chaotic seasons of waiting seem to drag on forever. Some of those times are when I swear that there was light at the end of the tunnel just for that tunnel to collapse and I found my self digging out again. With each collapse, there, in turn, became a little more chaos in my mind than the time before. One would think that having to do the same clean up over and over would make my mind a little clearer but the issue wasn’t the clean up, it was me trying to take a little more control every time because I was getting antsy. I was growing weary in the waiting, I was wanting God to move a little faster for fear that the opportunity was going to pass me by. Well, here’s some facts that came out of this fight with the Lord:

The tighter I hold onto what I want the less space there is for God to move
The more I try to self-manifest the more I am going to get it wrong
The more I self-project, the less accurate reality really is
The more I stress over things the smaller my faith becomes
The more fear I give in to the more cloudy my thoughts are
The cloudier my minds gets the less I can hear God
The less I hear God, the more I hear the enemy
And we all know where this is headed now.

There IS good that comes from times like these. For example, have you ever thought about how aware you are of God and how much you go to Him when in times of chaotic waiting? I know for me, I find my self in almost constant conversation with Him, mostly begging Him to show me what He is doing. And how amazing it is that the God of the universe loves us so much that in the midst of the chaotic waiting He wants us to communicate with him. Tim Keller said it this way “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything He knows.”

We want, so desperately to control the narrative in these times of waiting. But here is where the endurance kicks in. I once considered myself a runner and I can recall so many races where I was totally wiped out with several miles left in the race and the only way to finish is to dig deep down and find the energy and endurance that I have left to cross that finish line. It’s no different here except that God is the one in control. We can attempt to meander through the chaotic waiting with our self-projecting, self-manifesting ways but we will be reminded that He is more trustworthy and has our best interest in mind. Here’s the thing, our trust problem is a belief problem. We can either trust fully in ourselves or trust wholly in the power of God.

I already know what you are thinking. “I have trusted him before and look where it go me.” or “I want to trust Him but it just seems so far away” or “I know what He has told me but it just seems impossible” and while I haven’t felt all those things I can empathize with where you are at. Here’s what I do know. God has already fulfilled so many things that He promised He would do, so it should give us confidence to trust in the God of our not yet.

So let’s take a journey and visit some of the people in the Bible that have had to endure times of waiting, how they persevered and what God did in and through them in their time of waiting.

And while we are taking this journey, let us not lose sight of our own chaotic waiting. You might be tempted to run from the process. Don’t. The enemy doesn’t play fair and he wants nothing more than for you to give up. You will have to fight to guard your words, thoughts and heart as this process will lead to your breakthrough. Oftentimes, hardship and difficulty do not mean you are off course. It just means God is preparing you for greatness.

Walking Through the Valley: Trusting God’s Plan

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In a sermon I heard the other day from Robert Mandu “You can’t rush through the valley, you must walk.” The way that he explained it is; as in Psalm 23 “though I walk through the Valley of Darkness (other versions say the darkest valley), I will fear no evil.” And what David is talking about when he wrote this Psalm is not the “City Dark”. Not, when you walk out the front door of a restaurant in the middle of of the city, this is the darkness that you see in the middle of the night when you are camping and the moon is only a sliver. The kind of darkness where even though you think your eyes are open it’s so dark that you swear you are walking in your sleep. You can’t see the steps in front of you. Even if there was a bear chasing you, there’s no way to run, you can’t see anything in front of you. THAT kind of dark. So, keeping that in mind, we have times in our lives that we are in that kind of Valley. When that happens, we aren’t in a place where we can run, it’s about walking. It’s about feeling your way through the darkness trusting that God is going to provide the light that you need on your path. And yes, there are times that the light He is giving is not something that we want to see. I get it! There have been times in the valley that I want to scream and beg God to stop. I have tried yelling, screaming, begging, crying, and while it made me feel better, it didn’t change the path, through the valley of darkness that I was on. There are times that I have tried to run through the valley under my own accord and you know what happens, I trip on a root and fall down. And when I fall, I am left laying there in the mud in the cold damp air wishing that I would have just let God do what He was trying to do instead of taking control of the thing that I knew I couldn’t and shouldn’t and frankly, had no right to control in the first place.

Then there’s the getting up out of the mud where you are embarrassed, you hope no one else saw what happened and you just want to pretend that it didn’t happen but God allows the mud to stain your clothes, leaves to be stuck in your hair and maybe even a scrape here and there because it’s a way that your story can be used in the future to show His glory and how He got you out of it.

Here’s the thing that I have realized, God knows what we need more than we do. Frankly I don’t know why I keep trying to argue this point with Him but something that He has been teaching me is that He knows what is best. God knows what you need when you need it and often times He knows what the ultimate mountaintop is that He has planned for you so maybe, God is seeing if you can handle the little things, the stuff in the valley before you are able to be trusted with the mountaintop.

I recall one time where I was sure that the Valley of Darkness was all consuming, I couldn’t see myself out of a paper bag let alone be able to take 2 steps forward. I was wrestling with facing the “pruning of the vines” in my life and both having clear direction and not being able to do anything about it, all at the same time. As the days and prayers went by I thought I was doing what God wanted me to do. It felt like it and I felt as though I was walking through doors as they came open but there was this deep, and I mean deep seated fear and insecurity that was driving my every thought. Each word that came from my mouth was digging a deeper hole. I wasn’t sleeping, eating right, working out, being relationally mature and I certainly wasn’t treating myself very well with the words that I was saying to myself, the lies that I was allowing to work their way into my heart and mind. As soon as there was something positive that I knew was from the Lord, the enemy jumped into my thoughts and I found myself in a spiral that I couldn’t get out of. I was reaching for all the tools in my tool box when I was reminded of how much I loved worship music. So, one morning, as I was singing through my worship playlist it dawned on me that the valley of darkness that I was walking through was turning into an opportunity for me to show God that I did truly trust Him with not just my future but with that very moment.

The valley can sometimes seem like it goes on forever and when we are walking through it in the darkness it’s easy to not realize that you are slowly coming out of the valley and making your way to the top of the mountain. Before you know it, the sun is starting a rise a little, and as you turn your gaze upwards instead of being so concerned with where your feet are walking you realize that you have been climbing the mountain for some time now. The fog has lifted, the sun is warming your back, your breath starts to slow, the air seems lighter and you realize that there is in fact victory coming.

And when we reach a mountaintop, because we will, it can be just as easy to tell our mind not to remember where we were just at. However, if we don’t allow ourselves to turn around, even for just one moment, we rob ourselves the opportunity to enjoy the view of where we just were. There is such powerful freedom in overcoming the valley times. I have had more valley moments in my life than I care to remember but I know, without a shadow of a doubt that God has and will continue to use those times. Plus, whether or not we want to admit it, the times in the valley are a great opportunity for endurance and as said:

“Dear brothers and sisters , when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. For you know that when your faith is tested , your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” James 1:2-4

Valley times have been and will continue to be the hardest of times. But don’t give up. One thing that I can say with all honesty, God has lead me out of every valley that I have ever been in. While I would like to live in the fantasy world of thinking I will never be there again, I know that’s not the case. And, I know that when I am there again I will likely have to pull out the tools that remind me that it’s not a forever darkness but what I also know is the more I keep my gaze upon Him and the more that I trust His plan for my life the easier it may be to squint my eyes a little in those dark times and be able to see His light a little sooner than times before.

The Anatomy of Hope

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Not long ago I found myself standing on the Coast of the Pacific Ocean and straight ahead of me was a ship, I remember thinking to myself that it must not be that far away if I can see it. Right? Wrong. That sucker was hundreds of miles away but in my mind, if I could see it… then it was close.

That’s what hope feels like sometimes. That thing that you have been hoping for, praying for, seeking after, waiting for, working towards etc… after a point in time during our journey there are glimpses of the proverbial ship in the distance and since we can see it, it must be getting closer but sometimes, it’s not.

So why do we hope? What’s the purpose? If it’s hurts, why do we continue to press towards it?

A simple google search returns the definition of Hope as “a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.” and as I type this out while the word itself is listed as a noun, I would venture to say that it is more of a verb. It requires something of us in order for it to take place. So, naturally I see now why there can be pain, frustration, fear, uncertainty and the list goes on… But, there is an anatomy to hope so let’s take a look at that and see why it continues to take action on our part.

Not long after writing my previous post about shame there was a new parting of the clouds that happened but in those moments it wasn’t a clear “ahhh” moment like is written in movies or described in books. It was more of the first spring morning when your eyes start to open and the brisk air that has been blowing in your window for the past 3 months is replaced with a new warmth. A ray of sunshine curves through the curtains and the birds are singing their spring song for the first time. It is the joy that comes with the first sign of tulips waking from their slumber or the first whir of a lawn mower from down the street. It’s hope that starts to make it’s way to the surface, a sign that winter has waned and spring is here. While the moment is beautiful, we are reminded within days that winter has one more round left in it. Those kind of clouds, the ones that make you go “ugh, not again.” but this time there was a new clarity. I had spend the previous months digging myself out of the shame pit and I surely wasn’t going to allow myself to go there again however, what might have been even more challenging was determining this hope that I was searching for and what exactly that would look like.

First – We must allow a time of mourning. This is a cleansing of our old ways and our old thought patters to make way, to prepare for a new way of life.

I remember when I started on my weight-loss journey years ago and having to really mourn who I was leaving behind. I was excited, don’t get me wrong, but I knew eating whatever, whenever I wanted to was no longer a part of my life. I had to mourn that I had allowed myself to get to that point and I had to mourn that there may not be people who are willing to go along in this journey. Fast forward several years and facing a new journey of hope, the feelings that I experienced then were starting to come back again. I knew that the life that I sought after wasn’t the one that I was currently allowing my mind to accept so I had to mourn who I was leaving behind in order to fully understand the person that I was wanting to become. The person that I was going to allow God to create in me. The new pathway that my mind was going to follow, instead of the ways that I had been following in the past.

I was realizing in order for God to meet me where I was I had to acknowledge that place to begin with. Then it was about allowing the transformation to the new life that He had for me.

Second – Rebirth


“My mind came alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers
To break the dead shell of yesterdays
To risk being disturbed and changed”1

Let’s be honest, who wants to look at the dark parts of ourselves and say “ok, let’s dive in and change” but the reality is, we have to break away from the parts of us that held onto yesterday’s emotions. If we don’t allow ourselves to call it what it is and then be willing to break away from that we are doing nothing but dragging along the anchor that was weighing us down to begin with. If we are spending time dragging the anchor around we don’t have the energy or desire to put the hope within us into action and take the steps needed to find and thrive in the rebirth.

We want to be whole without work, but even Jesus had to grow in wisdom in invisible, repetitious, mundane ways to curve human nature back to God’s will2

So a challenge, because we have already acknowledged that this isn’t going to be easy, or fun….what are some things that are weighing you down? What are the barriers to the hope that is burning inside of you that keep you from taking action, from allowing the rebirth. For me, it’s two sided. I have a deep burning desire to live out the things that God has placed firmly in my heart and I have a very deep fear of being abandoned.

Now, what have those thoughts and fears done to you? For me, on one hand, I feel like the thing that God has placed on my heart to fulfill is that ship out at sea but it’s so cloudy, I know it’s there but I couldn’t tell you how close or far away it is. And on the other hand, my fear of being abandoned? It caused me to do everything for everyone in hopes that they wouldn’t forget me.

It’s scary, I get it! Because sometimes it’s extremely dark when you are standing on the proverbial shoreline and now all you can see are the flashing lights from that ship, it seems further than before, especially when the work is hard however, the risk is well worth the reward. When we truly allow ourselves to be vulnerable to God (PS He already knows your heart, He’s just waiting for us to come to Him) then it allows Him to fill the space that is empty, for Him to take root. Then, when we feel like the ship is within reach but we can’t quite reach it or the clouds come and go, He is the one who guides the tides to bring that hope a little closer to us.

Third-Excitement

I can recall, many times, the excitement that filled my mind as the hope of a new tomorrow seemed to be coming true. Like a child on Christmas morning or the day of a big race I had been training for, the adrenaline that rushed through me seemed to overtake the ability for me to see straight. It was all sunshine and rainbows and I wasn’t going to let reality strike me. The fact is, almost nothing in life is sunshine and rainbows and that’s why Hope is important. That’s why we take thoughts captive and hold them up to scripture, what we know, what God has spoken to us and what we hold onto as truth. My encouragement for you is to hold onto the excitement, press into it. Remember it on the days where that ship seems to be drifting a little further out to sea. Remember when that ship was so far away it was just a shadow on the water? Hold onto the excitement because now you can see the bow of the boat is facing north, the starboard has numbers & letters on it and the details of the wheelhouse are coming into focus. You’re almost there, don’t give up hope.

It is a journey, a long, sometimes arduous path of ups and downs, curves when you didn’t see them coming and many boulders that pop up along the way but there is an anatomy to this hope, and when we allow the opportunity to mourn who we were (or the thoughts that we had), allow a rebirth and then fill our hearts with excitement for what is happening. It becomes many parts, working together to create a remarkable story.

  1. To Bless this Space Between Us, John O’Donahue ↩︎
  2. A Theology of the ordinay, Julie Canlis ↩︎

Shame on me

~ abidingtrust ~ 1 Comment

Shame: a painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior. 1

I had been tossing around this word in my mind for months when I came across a book that painted the picture in a way that my soul had been longing to see it. This too shall Last, Finding Grace when suffering lingers – K.J. Ramsey The fact is, this book had been sitting on my shelf for the past 16 months and yes, I went to my “past orders” tab to search when I purchased this book and I was shocked to see it was that long ago. In fact I was so taken aback I blinked a moment and checked again. 16 months, 16 months of life had passed between when I ordered this book and when I read it. This then made me think back to what was happening in my life 16 months ago to make me order it. Was it something someone recommended to me? Did I see it on social media? I don’t know but what I do know is that God’s timing is always perfect.

For the past couple years when surrounded by certain people, acquaintances, or even strangers there were tinges of fear and shame that overwhelmed me that when certain subjects came up I wanted to slink into the background and literally hope that everyone in the room forgot that I existed. I became the master of changing subjects, well timed phone calls or even flat out excusing myself from conversations purely for self preservation. I went from the person who would always message back or call back as soon as possible to avoiding the fated “ding” or ringtone because I couldn’t stand the idea of tiptoeing into the realm of explaining my life again. I stepped out of life group, away from serving and hid in the shadows never knowing exactly why, until it was summed up in this:

Shame, is the primary tool evil uses to disrupt and disconnect our relationships, our stories, our communities, and our world2 It is the felt sense that I am bad, there really is something wrong with me, and I don’t matter to anyone else3 Shame is the stealthy, compelling energy evil is constantly using to distract us from living in the story where grace is here.4

I was allowing the shame in my life to drive a wedge between everything that I had known. The relationships that I had built, the people God had put in my life and it was even starting to drive a wedge between me and God himself. I was sure that I would end up alone, sitting in my pit of shame because no one understood, no one was going to listen and most importantly no one cared.

That’s the thing about this stupid 5 letter word, it hijacks us, it feeds endless lies into our hears and minds to paint the picture that went something like this in my mind:

I stood in a storefront, like they used to have in the 80’s, all decorated, when I was younger it was Fredrick & Nelson but that detail doesn’t matter. What mattered was that I had a whole life in there, everything was laid out. Timelines, facts, events, the truth but no matter who walked by, no one could see me. It was infuriating because as people I knew walked by the storefront of my life, I could see them looking in, even almost making eye contact with me but instead they looked past my face, as though I didn’t exist and the facts, the story lines and the truth, laid out before them didn’t make sense because they couldn’t hear the words that came from my mouth, they couldn’t see or hear me. I would try and scream in hopes that the panes of the glass were just too thick but still, nothing. I was abandoned, I was unlovable I was alone and headed to a destitute place of screaming silence into the wind in hopes that eventually a whisper would land on someones ear. Shame had boxed me into a place where I was disconnected, self protecting and completely detached.

I thought I had surrounded myself with a community of people where shame could not live but what I was starting to realize was the enemy took all the positive thoughts and conversations that I had up and to that point and it’s like he had wiped them from my memory bank, all in the name of shame. He was taking all the fears of my adult life and ripping open old wounds to expose them to new dirt, purely for the purpose of bringing me into deeper moments of solitude.

The truth is, however, we were never made to be that way. We were never created to sit in a place of screaming through a display window hoping for someone to hear us. There is a Creator who hears everything. He sees everything. He saw it as it transpired and placed people in our paths who are willing and ready to hear the cries of our heart but shame keeps us behind the curtain in hopes that we will forget about the truth. Shame convinces us that there is no one, ever who will be willing to love, understand, sit in the pit and hear our cries. We are left feeling as though we are the worst human being on the planet. How could I get myself here, again? How could I let this happen? How did this happen? How will anyone ever see me as anyone other than __________ (enter whatever negative name you have for yourself here).

The further deepening of the wound is that even when we are ready to pull back the curtain of shame or the window pane of silence, we tiptoe into the realm of the unknown where every answer, even if correct, we question, fear, write off, don’t believe, hide behind or run away from any perceived level of grace and love that we may feel from another human being. We have lived inside the sanctuary of shame for so long that anything other than that leaves us feeling naked, ashamed, vulnerable and fearful.

So I sit here today to say, shame on me (if you know what I mean) for not bringing the truth to light and instead hiding behind it for so long. The beauty is, however, that there IS good in this world. There IS a God who loves and cares so much more than I could ever imagine that in the midst of my shame and deep fear, He was knitting together a community of people who either had been through the same thing or they had simply been gifted with the ability to sit in the pit, to share love wrapped in empathy and to show that grace and truth still had a place in my life. Most importantly there began a moment where I realized that bringing the truth to light, even though it was terrifying, it no longer allowed a place for shame to take over my mind. Instead in honesty and exposure, in being seen in our sadness and despair, that we’ll most clearly see the truth that we’re still living in a story of love.5 That story, my friends, is written by the most complete and loving author there is, who sees all, knows all and has already written the next chapter. It’s time to step out from behind the veil of shame and into the sunlight of truth and love.


  1. Oxford Languages ↩︎
  2. The Soul of Shame (24)- Curt Thompson ↩︎
  3. I thought it was just me (But it isn’t) (13)- Brene Brown ↩︎
  4. This too shall last (49)- K.J. Ramsey ↩︎
  5. This too shall last (55) – K.J. Ramsey ↩︎

Beautiful

~ abidingtrust ~ Leave a comment

As the thunder cracked all around me, the lighting lit up the sky and the rain started falling at a swift pace I contemplated, do I wait it out or do I head home? I imagined a longer debate in my mind but surprisingly I grabbed my belongings and headed for the door. Awkwardly I ran to my car feeling the rain falling so heavy it soaked through my clothes in the 30 seconds it took me to get to shelter. Part of the issue; I am no longer a runner, I once was, triathlons actually but that is clearly not my life any more. I digress.

Soaked through my clothes, sitting in he car, almost excited to drive home in this storm I found it a bit ironic that while some, even most people may see this type of storm as scary, destructive or even inconvenient I found it beautiful and not for the reasons you may think. Beautiful because the typical “do things without thinking” type mindset had to be disrupted. Beautiful because I had to pay closer attention while driving home instead of allowing my mind to wander. Beautiful because it reminded me that thunder is actually caused by lightning, the main lightning channel to be exact, as it reaches the ground. Beautiful becuase it reminded me of the storms that literally have disrupted my own life in the past, yet, here I stand.

As each lightning bolt caught my eye it reminded me that very complex things happen inside that cloud in order to make a lightning bolt. That God himself created every facet of this beautiful part of nature. The heat and the ice inside the cloud, the exact time for the negative charge in the cloud releases and how it then reaches down from the sky to meet a positive charge coming up from the ground to form a complete lightning bolt. Then it hit me. In life we are faced with man fire and ice moments inside our minds. Moments when we feel every negative charge is too much to handle and we can’t help but release the energy. The issue comes when we realase it in an unhealthy manner. So, what is your lighting and where are you striking.

My past consisted of releasing energy by means of shopping, binge eating, shutting down or lashing out and many others. Today however, I can honestly say there is beauty in understanding my own anxiety and where to focus that energy, it’s on Jesus. When I feel my shoulders start to tense or my mind start to wander down the dark and twisty road I can refocus my thoughts by just speaking the name of Jesus; I am reminded He is with me. He is with me to walk through the thoughts that start with “what if” and anyone who has faced anxiety knows where that goes. It’s always followed by “I’m not enough” “they don’t like me/what I did” or “I failed.” I have taught myself to remember …even IF those things are true, which they rarely are, the truth I can remember is to “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.” 1 Peter 5:7

When life starts to overwhelm me or challenges keep coming, I speak the name of Jesus and I am comforted. I will not be the person who says storms will no longer come your way just by speaking the name of Jesus. In fact, it’s been said you may experience, or at least notice them more but the absooutely beautiful (Kalos) part is that we have someone to reach out to, to relase that lighting charge out to who will be on the other end who will guide and be with us in evey moment of the storm.

Be refined

~ abidingtrust ~ Leave a comment

It’s funny how one memory can spark a fury of emotion.  I use an app on my phone that goes back in time and shows what photos I took and other things posted on social media over the years.  This morning a photo came up and the wave of emotion which washed over me took me by surprise.

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This photo was captured initially because I thought it was cool to be able to take a photo of my own footprints in the wet sand without being able to see the ones walking away from it.  Today, I look back and see a moment where the ocean was about to wash away those footprints…. and my goodness did they ever.

That moment in time was surrounded by confusion, feelings of being lost, unloved, scared and willing to be tossed about in the waters that were so quickly rising above my head.  It was a time where I was letting the world define who I was and where I wanted to go.

How often do we in life look back at moments like this and cast them aside as a “oh that happened….” thought?  I nearly did that this morning.  I nearly let that moment pass.  Looking back I very clearly remember standing on that beach gazing out over the ocean waters and saying these words “Lord, please make it clear to me what to do next.  If it is to be, make it clear, if not, then help me let it go.”

Less than 3 weeks later it was clear as day what direction I was to go.  I remember it being excruciatingly painful.  I recall hours of tears and pain beyond what I thought I could bear. Although today as I look back and remember the prayer that came from my mouth, I am full of joy knowing what I thought I couldn’t bear to take on, I now know was exactly what I never knew I needed to conquer.

In life we have moments which we can either chose to let define us or refine us.

Define –  def: To mark out boundary or limits of
Refine –  def: Improve by making small changes

4 years ago I was willing to let it define me but looking back I am so thankful I let it refine me.  As those ocean waves washed up and pulled my footprints back to sea the refinement process began.  To be refined wasn’t about simply overcoming the situation at hand.  I couldn’t see past my pain for a long time.  I had boundaries and limits on what I could see and handle.  My problem wasn’t what was going on it was who I was letting define me.  As soon as I changed my focus from everyone else to God everything changed from a defining moment to a refining moment.

I don’t know what your summer looked like but for me it was dotted of moments of frustration, pain, tears, hurt, confusion, misunderstandings and I could go on….. but something I am learning is in those seasons of life we have an opportunity to make a decision.  Be defined or be refined.  So as you look back on the summer, don’t let the painful moments simply pass by for the sake of not wanting to feel the ugly feels again.  When we do, we run the risk of not being able to see the refinement that is beginning.

Weak enough….

~ abidingtrust ~ 2 Comments

What if I am not weak enough?  That was the thought that ran through my mind like a freight train on my way to work yesterday.  I was in the middle of a week of working a lot of hours, training for a race and all the other things that I have going on yet in the midst of everything I still couldn’t seem to get rid of this small but screaming uncomfortable ache inside my soul.

For weeks I had been working through this and while I thought it was fading more and more each day what I really longed for was the time that I would wake up and it wouldn’t be there at all. Alas, today as not that day.  But that’s when it hit me.  What if I am not weak enough.

Paul talks about our weaknesses in 2 Corinthians 12:8-10 and I have written about this before but at the very end of verse 10 he says something that I couldn’t get out of my mind.  “For when I am weak, then I am strong.” What if I hold on to this weakness just enough that I think I can get through it more on my own, so that I can feel like I was able to overcome under my own strength.  Here’s the thing however, Paul says right here “for WHEN I am weak THEN I am strong.”  I need to allow myself to admit that I am weak, because then I find that I can get my self out of the way enough that God can work in me.

HE can work his ways in and through me, I am then given the strength to take this on, I am made strong and what happens next?  The when becomes then. When I am sad and upset, frustrated, hurt and insecure I then become strong, loved, understood, respected and secure in who I am.

When I am weak enough, it brings me to a place where while I cannot change the actions or words of others I am made strong in knowing that there is an almighty God who cares for, loves and desires what’s best for me far beyond any thing or any one in this world.  When  I am weak then I am strong…. It’s so easy to sit back and not want to admit our weaknesses.  Or better yet to see them and stand in the way because we think that is when we are made strong.  Like we have the ability to fix it all, or at least somehow that my not sleeping and tears that fall from my eyes will somehow be my strength? It’s not.  It never has been.

In fact, when I have allowed myself to truly be weak enough it’s only then that I can get out of my own way enough to see the strength and power of God coming through.  I just need to stop fighting and be still.  Listen & be weak enough.

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Saying goodbye 

~ abidingtrust ~ Leave a comment

In my life, up to this point, I have not had to say goodbye an excessive amount. Sure, I have had to say goodbye to family, dear, sweet, loved family, and as a child we moved across the state but otherwise I have been pretty fortunate.  However, lately, my heart has been broken and then repaired, cracked and glued together and seemingly smashed into a million pieces only to be picked up one by one and handed back to me.  By the end of the month I will have shed tears, handed out hugs, prayed over and watched 9 people move onto new chapters in their lives.  I feel like I have said goodbye more in the last 6 months than ever before in my life and not one single time is it any easier than before.  In fact, if I may be honest, it only gets more difficult. I realize that God puts people in our lives for a purpose, for a time and for a season but sometimes I just would love to know the reasons why this happens, I feel like it would make my heart not break so deeply…. or maybe it would.

Last night, as I was praying with a dear friend and sister I struggled to find the words that my heart so deeply wanted to say.  I recall, during this prayer, my soul crying out to God to help me find the words, to help me say the perfect thing, pray the perfect prayer that would dry the tears freely falling from both of our eyes and place permanent smiles so that there would be no more heart ache.  I couldn’t.  So I just prayed what I could.

I ache over the thought of having to say goodbye again.  The raw honest truth is that  I totally get this whole “for a season” thing but can I just say this, sometimes I just don’t like it.  I want this season to be my whole life!  But something stirred inside me this morning and I was left hearing this “Just because they are not physically here, doesn’t mean they aren’t there, in your heart.”  Now, I understand that it’s not the same thing but at some point I have to begin to choose the joy in knowing that they will forever have perfect little cubbies in my heart designed just for them rather than sitting in the pain and frustration in saying goodbye.

As each of the disciples left for their journeys I can’t imagine that it was easy to say goodbye to them but it was what God had called them to!  Some were sent because if they stayed they would be persecuted so God sent them to spare their lives.  Others were sent by God because that’s where He wanted the gospel to be shared.  Regardless, they were sent by God because He has a plan a million times greater and well thought out than ours.  They trusted and so shall I.

It doesn’t’ remove the pain, in fact it doesn’t even mask it but what it does is help me deal with it.  It reminds me that being sent, being called somewhere else, fulfilling God’s plan doesn’t mean that they are gone, it just means that memories and the love that I have for each of these precious humans is tucked away in the cubbies of my heart, forever inscribed with their names and the weight of the blessing that they have had on my life.  And for that reason I can  proudly say that the weight of saying goodbye is welcomed, for great weight is the product of great love.

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